[848] In 1806, that is nine years after the death of Burke, parliament first authorized enlistment for a term of years. See an account of the debates in Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. vii. pp. 380–391. Compare Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. v. p. 475; and Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 116.
[849] Prior's Life of Burke, p. 316; Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 502, vol. xxviii. pp. 69, 96; and Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. pp. 152, 171, contain evidence of his animosity against the slave-trade, and a more than sufficient answer to the ill-natured, and, what is worse, the ignorant, remark about Burke, in the Duke of Buckingham's Mem. of George III. vol. i. p. 350.
[850] On the respect which George III. felt for the slave-trade, see note 259 to this chapter. I might also have quoted the testimony of Lord Brougham: ‘The court was decidedly against abolition. George III. always regarded the question with abhorrence, as savouring of innovation.’ Brougham's Statesmen, vol. ii. p. 104. Compare Combe's North America, vol. i. p. 332.
[851] Burke's Works, vol. ii. pp. 490–496; Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 44–55, a very able speech, delivered in 1771. Compare a letter to Dowdeswell, in Burke's Correspond. vol. i. pp. 251, 252.
[852] The arguments of Burke anticipated, by more than twenty years, Fox's celebrated Libel Bill, which was not passed till 1792; although, in 1752, juries had begun, in spite of the judges, to return general verdicts on the merits. See Campbell's Chancellors, vol. v. pp. 238, 243, 341–345, vol. vi. p. 210; and Meyer, Institutions Judiciaires, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205, Paris, 1823.
[853] Mr. Farr, in his valuable essay on the statistics of the civil service (in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. xii. pp. 103–125), calls Burke ‘one of the first and ablest financial reformers in parliament,’ p. 104. The truth, however, is, that he was not only one of the first, but the first. He was the first man who laid before parliament a general and systematic scheme for diminishing the expenses of government; and his preliminary speech on that occasion is one of the finest of all his compositions.
[854] Prior's Life of Burke, pp. 206, 234. See also, on the retrenchments he effected, Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85; Burke's Correspond. vol. iii. p. 14; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 57–60.
[855] In 1788, Lord Rockingham said, in the House of Lords, ‘Instead of calling the war, the war of parliament, or of the people, it was called the king's war, his majesty's favourite war.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 857. Compare Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 235, with the pungent remarks in Walpole's George III. vol. iv. p. 114. Nicholls (Recollections, vol. i. p. 35) says: ‘The war was considered as the war of the king personally. Those who supported it were called the king's friends; while those who wished the country to pause, and reconsider the propriety of persevering in the contest, were branded as disloyal.’
[856] ‘I am not here going into the distinction of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.’ Speech on American taxation in 1774, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 173. In 1775 (vol. i. p. 192): ‘But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question.’ At p. 183: we should act in regard to America, not ‘according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to mere general theories of government; the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling.’ In one of his earliest political pamphlets, written in 1769, he says, that the arguments of the opponents of America ‘are conclusive; conclusive as to right; but the very reverse as to policy and practice,’ vol. i. p. 112. Compare a letter, written in 1775, in Burke's Correspond. vol. ii. p. 12.
[857] In 1766, George III. writes to Lord Rockingham (Albemarle's Rockingham, vol. i. pp. 271, 272): ‘Talbot is as right as I can desire, in the Stamp Act; strong for our declaring our right, but willing to repeal!’ In other words, willing to offend the Americans, by a speculative assertion of an abstract right, but careful to forego the advantage which that right might produce.